By IANS,
New Delhi : With the world’s leading powers trying to enlist emerging economies in dealing with the global financial crisis, India, Brazil and South Africa are set to focus on their role in evolving a global financial architecture at the third IBSA summit Wednesday.
The IBSA, which brings together economic powerhouses from Asia, Africa and Latin America together, will focus on firming up trilateral cooperation on a slew of pressing global issues like terrorism, multilateral trade negotiations, inclusive development, food and energy security.
With India and the US sealing their 123 pact and the NSG granting a waiver to India, civil nuclear cooperation will also be high on the agenda.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, South African President Kgalema Motlanthe and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are expected to discuss the fallout of the financial crisis and what the three major emerging economies can do to help the G8 countries to deal with the crisis, official sources said.
The G8 countries have called for a more proactive involvement of emerging economies in evolving an international financial architecture that will effectively prevent such crises from happening.
The three countries, who collectively batted for rights of developing countries at the Doha round of negotiations, have advocated reforms of the UN and global financial institutions to bring them in tune with changing times.
The three leaders will meet Oct 15 and are expected to come out with a joint declaration at the day-long summit. The IBSA summit will be preceded by a meeting of top business leaders of the three countries Tuesday. An editors’ conference is being organised Monday to bridge information and knowledge gap between the three countries which are separated by vast distances but are akin in their aspirations in seeking a larger role in global affairs.
The countries set a target of $15 billion by 2010 for intra-regional trade at their last summit in Johannesburg. The first summit was held in Brasilia.
They have fleshed out a unifying vision of transnational economic and social partnership, which will revolve around a free trade area, promoting inclusive growth, connectivity and energy security. At the last time, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pushed for a ‘time-bound action’ to achieve these goals.